From Jennifer Cox of Crave:
Annie Murphy Talks Schitt’s Creek
Season 3 of Schitt’s Creek is back on January 10th at 9pm. The half-hour single-camera comedy is co-created by Eugene and Daniel Levy, who also star alongside Catherine O’Hara, Emily Hampshire, Jennifer Robertson, Chris Elliott, and Annie Murphy, who filled in readers on what it’s like working on such a hilarious show. Continue reading.
From Tony Wong of the Toronto Star:
Luke Roberts – From war of worlds to words
When he received the daunting casting call to play “the greatest warrior that ever lived†in HBO’s blockbuster series Game of Thrones, English actor Luke Roberts wasn’t sure if he was up to the task. Continue reading.
Season 2 of Exhibitionists begins this afternoon on CBC, likely surprising many of you who didn’t realize there had been a Season 1. Or those of you who might have checked out CBC.ca. Besides the absence of a feature box promoting the show, the show’s link from the homepage schedule leads to “Sorry, we can’t find the page you requested”. CBC recommitted themselves—somewhat—to arts programming last year with the launch of series such as Exhibitionists and Crash Gallery, though a large TV audience—or marketing budget—hasn’t yet followed.
The 30-minute series highlights artists, their process and their impact on the community, and is hosted by the multi-talented Amanda Parris: artist, educator, scholar, producer, actor and playwright.
Fortunately, the TV audience is only a piece of Exhibitionists‘Â mandate as a multi-platform program of short documentaries, digital series and arts-related content from across CBC. Parris calls it a flagship for CBC Arts, which is primarily a digital hub where original and aggregated content from around CBC is released year-round.
Parris is an engaging and passionate host who talks about the crucial role of digital platforms in what she and the CBC Arts team she works with are producing. “We realized we were attracting a great millennial audience online, so this season we’ve launched a YouTube channel that has some of the same content as the show, but also some content specific to YouTube.â€
They’ve paid close attention to what people watched, liked and shared online, and of course what they comment on, so have a good sense of what their audience is attracted to: “Artists who are disrupting the conversation, challenging the status quo. Our audience is interested in diversity, so we don’t just stay in city centres, and we represent every medium—not just visual arts but dance, digital arts.â€
“We’re interested not in presenting art that people will like all the time, but art that will spark conversations. The types of art that get the largest response are the ones that hit you in the heart or someplace intellectually or spiritually. People are interested in art that’s odd.â€
Parris cites some season one standouts as photographer Dina Goldstein’s childhood icons twisted into a contemporary setting—“Ken might be a cross-dresser, Barbie looks really depressedâ€â€”and Marina Bychkova’s dolls that explore issues such as breast cancer and sell for tens of thousands of dollars.
“My hope  is we connect Canadians to art and that in turn inspires them to be more engaged with art in general,” said Parris. “Art can literally change the world. It’s not a coincidence that artists are some of the first to be targeted by repressive governments. Artists are powerful people.”
“We live in a very celebrity-obsessed culture—I just came out of a 45 minute conversation about Beyoncé, so I’m part of it—but there also needs to be room to talk about artists who aren’t necessarily interested in entertainment or celebrity but who are trying to create beautiful, provocative, innovative things that change our world. I’m so excited to be part of CBC’s commitment to doing that.â€
Exhibitionists airs Sundays at 4:30 p.m. on CBC, or find segments online at http://www.cbc.ca/beta/arts/exhibitionists.
Originally published in the summer 2016 issue of Reel West magazine:
We live in an age of abundance. So says the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC), and apparently they don’t mean an abundance of public consultations that have little hope of engaging the public.
From 2014’s Talk TV hearing to this year’s Discoverability Summit by the CRTC, plus the federal government review on how to bring Canada’s cultural industries into the digital age, everyone wants to know how best to get Canadian content in front of consumers. The task would be easier if the CRTC and the government could speak the same language as consumers.
Talk TV proved to be a disastrous miscommunication between what the public wanted and what the CRTC mandated in terms of skinny basic, for example. Cable companies are offering packages that conform to the letter of the law, with extra fees that go beyond the $25 irate consumers feel they were promised. Now the CRTC is examining the offerings prior to renewing broadcaster licenses, but given the regulations specify a very limited number of channels and did not specify that cable boxes or package discounts needed to be part of the deal, the result will likely be a public relations exercise that has no hope of placating the public.
Recent CRTC/National Film Board Discoverability Summit events aimed to find ways to help consumers discover Canadian content in this “age of abundance.†Even though I created a website 10 years ago to help Canadians hear about Canadian content, I didn’t manage to hear about the event taking place here in Vancouver. The main event took place in Toronto in mid-May and looking at the list of speakers, seems to have been another example of industry people talking to industry people about how to reach the audience, the same kind of groupthink that has led to futile branding exercises ignored by the public such as Eye on Canada.
Now, Minister of Canadian Heritage Mélanie Joly is leading public, stakeholder and online consultations on “Strengthening Canadian Content Creation, Discovery and Export in a Digital World.†If you work in the television and film industry, hopefully you completed the pre-consultation questionnaire which will be used to frame the consultations on possibly overhauling the Broadcast Act and the CRTC, among others. Important work, long overdue. But …
The first question was whether you were a consumer or a stakeholder. If you answered as a consumer, the questions were in many cases identical to those asked of stakeholders, including “What are the most urgent challenges facing the culture sector in the creation, discovery and export of Canadian content in a digital world?†and “What are the most significant barriers facing the culture sector in the creation, discovery and export of Canadian content in a digital world?â€
I have a question: in governmentese, what is the difference between “urgent challenges†and “significant barriersâ€? In any case, the provided responses assume a level of knowledge of the industry the average Canadian doesn’t have – tax credits, how funding is allocated, co-production treaties — leading me to believe the government is not actually trying to get the opinions of average Canadians.
One of the response choices was “dealing with disruptive digital intermediaries.†If anyone can even parse what they’re talking about (hi Netflix), how is that not a biased way to describe the concept? Two questions asked what other countries are doing that could help with content creation and discovery, and two of my answers had to be “I have no idea.†If you have the attention of Canadian consumers, why would you waste it on questions better answered through a competitive analysis?
Not that anyone has asked, but I discover new shows through recommendations by real-life and social media friends, newspaper and web-based critics, and Netflix’s recommendation engine. I have ideas on how those might be leveraged to better serve Canadian content, and I sent them to the Discoverability Summit blog, where they entered the black hole that is the Canadian television and film industry public consultation process.
The focus of these consultations is important. The outcomes could change the definition of Canadian content, the funding models, the mandates of the CBC and the CRTC. It could create new laws and agencies governing our cultural industries. Done right, it could strengthen our industries and job market and make it easier for audiences to watch our content. Done wrong, it could put the Canadian industry further behind in a Netflix world.
Given the last major overhaul of Canadian content regulations was in 1991, the dawn of the world wide web, it’s time. But if public consultation is just lip service – with those lips speaking jargon – there’s little hope that the needs of the industry will meet the needs of the public.
CBC’s spy drama The Romeo Section returns for its second season tonight, and creator Chris Haddock sounds as relieved as his fans. “It wasn’t a sure thing. I’m grateful to be back.”
The public broadcaster’s last fall season didn’t get off to a great start, but both Romeo and This Life were given a second chance and subtly retooled to allow new viewers to come aboard. Haddock feels Romeo found its feet about halfway through the first season. “I feel like I’ve figured out where the real guts and strength of the show is and I’m going to try to prove it. It’s a little more focused. I found last year I probably had one too many storylines.â€
Asking audiences to pay attention to multiple threads weaving into an elaborate pattern has been his style since the heydey of Da Vinci’s Inquest, when he recalls people asking, “are you ever going to wrap up these storylines?â€
“It took time for the audience to get used to it and love that style. Some of the actors used to complain, ‘are we ever going to solve this case?’ But I find the stories take ahold of me and I keep digging and asking questions and finding that good vein.â€
A chat with Haddock feels less like an interview and more like paying attention to multiple threads weaving into an elaborate conversation, with the PR person signalling the end just as a network might cancel a show on a cliffhanger.
Speaking of Intelligence, Haddock confirms The Romeo Section grew out of elements of that short-lived CBC series that had never completely left his system. Nearly 10 years after the cancellation he still fields questions about whether it might come back, but his James Dean response is: “Live fast, die young, leave a good-looking corpse.â€
He’s been around the industry for a long time and has the creative freedom and come-what-may attitude to prove it. He knows it’s harder to find an audience in this time of “peak TV†than when Da Vinci was on the air, added to the ever-present competition from U.S. shows and lack of a U.S.-style promotional infrastructure, such as the late-night talk show circuit and glut of entertainment magazines. “I enjoy all the challenges,†he says. “I don’t panic over things that may have panicked me in my first years.â€
“I was in a state when I began Da Vinci where I’d been writing pilots and movies in L.A. but my domestic life was a disaster, I was trying to get my kids,†he says. “I had this great attitude that I didn’t set out to have which is yes, this show is important, but my kids are the most important thing. So I had a good balance from the beginning.â€
That calm extends to production challenges such as shooting Vancouver for Hong Kong in the pilot of The Romeo Section and creating gritty drama out of a city with a lot of shine.
“It’s not easy to get a tense, dark, psychologically disturbing atmosphere when it’s Vancouver and it’s beautiful. For a noir show like this I’d love to be shooting in the winter—because I’d get a lot of rain, I’d get earlier nights—but I’m not. You have to figure out a way. So it’s not classic noir, it’s more of a California noir. You can be just as miserable in the hot sun.â€
The Romeo Section airs Wednesdays at 9 p.m. on CBC.
